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the Honeycombes, on account of Bill and her being unhappy. She said: "I'll bring up Lloyd my
way." But she didn't have any idea of bringing up children - Lloyd was spoiled; he grew up like
a weed... She was quite a gooa living woman, but a bit religious, a bit odd.'
Zoe's aversion to the Honeycombes did not, however, intensify until after the war. Nor did Bill's
to her. He was still tied to her, and supported her and their two sons quite adequately: he had a
quarter interest in the business and his RAAF pay. But while he was stationed in Melbourne he
met a much younger women who would one day be his second wife.
She was Gwen Copeland, who was 18 years younger than Bill. When they met, in 1942, she
was 20 and he was 38. Gwen was in the WAAF, a stenographer, and a sergeant like Bill.
According to her they met in the Sergeants Mess of an RAAF base near Melbourne after she
had had a dental check-up. They were both living on the RAAF base at the time. It seems they
started going out together, despite the fact that he was a married man.
Gwen's father, who had worked on the railways and served in the First World War, died in
1924 when she was two. Her mother had remarried a steamroller driver, Edwin Thomas
Madden, who also had a young daughter, Mary, from a previous marriage. They lived in
Lawson, about 15 miles east of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Gwen was educated at the
primary school there and then at a high school in Hazelbrook, a few miles further east. She was
employed in an office in Sydney when war was declared.
379
Her maiden name, Copeland, is the same as that of the Helen Copeland who married Lawrence
Harward Mountjoy at Torrumbarry in July 1883; she was born in Ireland and her father was a
surveyor. It is quite possible, though not proved, that she and Gwen Copeland were related.
Bill Honeyoombe and Gwen had happy times in Melbourne during the war: work was also less
demanding than in Ayr and hours less long.
Meanwhile, the nearness of the Japanese and the chance of invasion diminished when the battle
for Papua and New Guinea came to a bloody end by December 1943. More than 6,000
Australians had died in combat there, over 2,000 of them in the fighting along the Kokoda Trail.
American forces then made major advances in the Pacific, closing in on Japan. But although
Germany surrendered to the Allies in Europe in May 1945, it was not until 15 August - after
atom bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - that the Labour Prime Minister
Ben Chifley, who had taken over from John Curtin after his death in July, announced the
surrender of Japan.
The war was over. People gathered in the streets of Ayr to celebrate, and all work stopped. An
open-air service for all religious denominations was held -34 of Ayr's sons died in the war - and
the following day became a holiday, with sporting events and a children's picnic. Empty shops
and homes were opened up and reoccupied, but it was three years before all the air-raid
shelters in the area were demolished. Recovery in economic terms, however, was slow, and
tobacco remained in short supply for many years. The major event of postwar reconstruction
was the high-level road and rail bridge across the Burdekin River connecting Home Hill and
Ayr. The low-level bridge had been wrecked by floodwaters in 1917, 1925, 1940 and washed
away, with a train, in March 1945. Work began on the new bridge in April 1947, and it was
fully operational within ten years.
After the war, late in 1945, both Bill and Zoe returned to Ayr, living together for the last time
with their sons; John was nine and Lloyd was nearly two. Bill had said goodbye to Gwen, most
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